


It's Cold Outside.

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Heavy Angst, Hurt, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied Character Death, Implied Child Abuse, M/M, Moriarty is Alive, No Romance, Nobody likes him, Oops, POV First Person, POV Jim Moriarty, Present Tense, Why Did I Write This?, just hurt, moriarty as a kid, moriarty cares, no happy ending, richard brook as a kid, sadness in buckets, their father is abusive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 10:49:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9120364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dad comes home angry.We run.The running doesn't stop for what feels like forever.





	

Dad came home angry.

He came home angry far too often these days. It scared me lots, and I knew it was wrong, that I feared my own Dad - whenever I heard doors slamming, I'd become skittish, because the slamming-door was a sign that Dad was angry, and when Dad was angry we all stayed out of his way. Nobody wanted to get on his bad side. I didn't. Mam didn't. My little brother, Richard, didn't.

One time, he came home drunk. Smashed a beer bottle on my head. The next morning, I woke up black and blue, but I didn't cry. I've never cried. I just don't have the ability to do it. Richard cried for me, though. "Why aren't you crying, Jim?" He'd ask, tears in the corners of his brown eyes, so much like Mam's and my own, and when I didn't reply the tears would come leaking out. The sight of my little brother crying for a pain I couldn't feel made me angry.

"Doesn't it hurt, Jim?" He asked me one time as I pushed my jaw back into place with what would be a satisfactory click normally.

"No, Richard," I'd reply, honestly, "It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts any more."

That night, we hear the smash of glass against the wall; Dad smashing another beer bottle against the wall in a drunken fit, like he'd done two days before, and the day before that, too. I know the difference between the sounds - how saddening. Then Mam screams, a bone-chilling scream. It echoes in the rooms, and shivers crawl up my spine. I know we've got to go then. For Mam to scream, it must've been bad. She never screams.

"C'mon, Richard, we gotta go," I whisper, allowing urgency to lace my tone. Something must grab his attention, because he turns to face me. His brown eyes look innocent. So, so innocent. "What about Mama?" He says, and I feel a pang deep in my chest.

I say, "We'll come back for her, but she'd want us to leave," the phrasing coming out more morbid than intended. He just shrugs - morbidity is a normality.

"Okay, Jim." Richard takes my hand, and I pull him out of the house. Sneaking past the kitchen. I tell Richard to close his eyes then, after spotting the pools of blood on the floor, and once we're out of the house I tell him to open his eyes again.

We break into a run, hands laced together as we approach the nearby woods. Snow's falling from the sky, and Richard looks entranced by it - he keeps trying to get me to stop so we can make snow angels. But we can't, and we have to keep moving.

My breaths are crystals, suspended in the air, and the pale silver light of the moon as it shines down on us illuminates both our breaths and the delicate coats of frost on the trees and the ground. It seems delicate, peaceful almost.. But then the echo of Mam's screams fills my ears, and I tug us back into a run.

The running doesn't stop for what feels like forever. I forget which way we came from. Was it that tree over there we circled? That one on the right? Everything blurs together. It's getting colder. Richard's shivering from the cold, but his eyes shine with a light I haven't seen in what feels like forever, and he's bursting with nervous energy.

"Let's go to that evergreen over there," Richard says, and I allow him to drag me over to it. Once there, we sit down, side by side in front of its thick trunk..

We sit for five minutes in silence, Richard occasionally reaching up and batting at a long tree branch, giggling when small curtains of snow fall away from it. Then he speaks up. There's a stammer to his words, and it scares me, because Richard is scared of nothing, and is adventurous and brave and not scared, but there he is, shivering and cold and scared, "I want t-to g-g-go home." The stutter is obvious.

"Two minutes, Richard," I say, getting up and walking around the clearing. I'm not cold. I'm at an average temperature.. I jog around the clearing, and what I find startles me: I recognise none of it. We're lost. I tell Richard that.

"Oh," he announces, lying on his back in the snow. He's lost his jacket somewhere. "Th-that's okay. We don't have to talk to Dad any more." I swear he smiles here.

"Where's your coat, Richard?" I ask, nervous; I know the dangers of cold, and he looks so fragile, so breakable out in this cold weather. It's almost as if the will to live has left him.

He yawns. "I-I don't know, J-Jim... but I don't mind. I'm not cold no more," He draws in a deep, shuddering breath. "I-it's okay, Jimmy, I'm... so warm."

Terror washes over me in waves. He's paler than I've ever seen before, lips drained of colour and skin that looks taut and dry. I'm scared, but I won't admit that. Richard's eyes slide closed. He looks like he's sleeping.

"Rich!" I scream, helplessly shaking him, but he doesn't move. His head lolls down, and he does nothing. My movements are frantic when I search for a pulse; there is none.

I feel a sudden lack of energy as it leaves me, and I feel a slight horror when I realise that my little brother, hewasmylittlebrother, is dead and I as good as killed him, because I took us into that forest and it should be me there, unmoving, not him! I don't think of Mam and what happened to her, or the blood pooling on the floor. I don't think of Dad and his undeniable rages, and his undoubted anger at me once he finds out what I've caused because of my sheer stupidity.

All I can think of is Richard's unmoving body and the frost on his eyelids and the blue tint to his lips. I think of all the ways I've failed him, ending in this utterly large failure, and the way he looked at me with such utter faith, such confidence that I would keep him safe. Most of all, though, I thought of his last words, and the way he'd said them. The last words he ever said. The words I can still hear, the words I've forced myself to memorise.

"I-it's okay, Jimmy, I'm... so warm."

-

Two weeks later, Carl Powers dies.

I'm not surprised.

**Author's Note:**

> I've only been writing for like three months and this feels hella bad. Can I have somebody comment and tell me where to improve? Thanks...  
> I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> [Other works by me can be found on Wattpad under my username of @brokentealsong.)


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